Treesearch

Adoption of the Northwest Forest Plan (NWFP) in 1994 marked a pivotal moment in federal forest management in the Pacific Northwest, shifting focus away from intensive timber harvest toward an ecosystem management approach that emphasized late successional and old forest habitat with the creation of a reserve network across moist and dry forest zones. Thirty years after implementation, concerns over accelerating wildfire threats have prompted efforts to adapt the Plan to a warming climate, yet the actual effects of recent fires on NWFP forests are not well understood. In this study, we...

Climate change may affect the distribution and performance of many high latitude species. Plants producing fleshy, edible fruits are ecologically, economically, and socially important components of Alaskan forests, but the potential impacts of climate change on their regional distribution and local abundance remain largely unknown. This study investigated how climate change may impact the regional occupancy and local abundance of blueberry (Vaccinium alaskaenseand V. ovalifolium) and salmonberry (Rubus spectabilis) in Southeast Alaskan forests and evaluated environmental correlates of...

Black ash (Fraxinus nigra) wetlands in the northern US Lake States are threatened by emerald ash borer (EAB), with the impacts expected to be severe because of the foundational role of this species in controlling ecosystem functions. Underplanting before mortality from EAB is one approach being considered to replace black ash and maintain ecosystem functions. We report on third-year survival and growth responses of five underplanted tree species (red maple, silver maple, American elm, balsam poplar, and swamp white oak), to differences in seedling stock size, understory competition, and...

The natural environment is integral to supporting healthy and resilient communities. Community forests (CFs) are forested parcels, typically in rural areas, where community members have access, share governance, and receive various benefits. While considerable research demonstrates that urban parks and forests are important for human health, similar assessments are less available for CFs specifically. Although CFs exist in multiple countries, their policy, ecological, ownership, and governance contexts differ significantly. This review focuses on CFs in the United States. The goals of this...

Aquatic invasive species can devastate native biodiversity and human water infrastructure. Effective eradication relies on early detection. However, commonly used visual surveys are ineffective for detection of small populations of submerged invasive species in large water bodies. Here, we explored detection of invasive aquatic plants, animals (vertebrate and invertebrate), and pathogens using 10 environmental DNA (eDNA) water sampling events every two weeks between June and October, 2018, informing ideal sampling times for long-term early-detection monitoring. The highest number of...

Background: Drought, human disturbance, and invasive species are reshaping disturbance regimes and increasing the scale, severity, and frequency of wildfire in many ecosystems around the globe, including the sagebrush steppe of western North America. Recent studies suggested greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) adhere to strong site fidelity in the aftermath of wildfire, remaining inside fire perimeters for nesting and brood rearing despite negative consequences for survival and reproduction. Sage-grouse in Idaho exhibited context-dependent changes to space use after a large,...

Many territorial species use vocalizations as a primary form of territory defense, and the areas actively defended do not necessarily correspond with an individual's home range. As passive acoustic monitoring becomes a primary population assessment method for soniferous species, often in combination with occupancy modeling, effective conservation will require more detailed information on species-specific space use to refine interpretation. Northern spotted owls (Strix occidentalis caurina) actively vocalize during the breeding season, but interpreting acoustic data is complicated by...

Large-scale hydrologic models are increasingly being developed for operational use in the forecasting and planning of water resources. However, the predictive strength of such models depends on how well they resolve various functions of catchment hydrology, which are influenced by gradients in climate, topography, soils, and land use. Most assessments of hydrologic model uncertainty have been limited to traditional statistical methods. Here, we present a proof-of-concept approach that uses interpretable machine learning techniques to provide post hoc assessment of model sensitivity and...

The Spotted Turtle (Clemmys guttata) is a small freshwater turtle that is currently under review for federal listing under the U.S. Endangered Species Act. Recent distributional models suggest that Spotted Turtles potentially occur in the eastern panhandle, northcentral, and northern panhandle regions of West Virginia, with previous survey efforts documenting the species at three wetlands in the eastern panhandle. We sampled 62 sites across 41 unique wetlands in West Virginia to assess the contemporary region-scale distribution and identify occupied wetlands. We used the results of these...

Long-term survival of a conservation-reliant species requires understanding the impact of threats on population growth rate and the management actions that can help mitigate these threats. We used a threat assessment with expert-elicited estimates to determine the relative effect of each stage-specific threat on the population growth rate of the wood turtle Glyptemys insculpta. In addition, we offered potential management actions that could mitigate these threats and examined the relative cost and benefit of each. The experts responded that predators had the largest effect on hatchling and...